Apulian Cacioricotta goat's cheese: technical interventions for improving yield and organoleptic characteristics

The production process for making Cacioricotta, the most common goat cheese of Apulia, was modified to improve both its yield and organoleptic characteristics. The changes made to the traditional cheesemaking process consisted in reducing the amounts of rennet to be added from 100 to 40 ml/q (q=quintal=100 kg) and in introducing a mesophilic starter mixed with the conventional thermophilic starter. The traditional cheese was compared to the modified product by means of routine analyses and measurements of the cheese yields and determination of free aminoacids and free fatty acids. The analytical techniques utilized were high pressure liquid chromatography (HPLC) and gas chromatography (GC). Both the cheeses had the same level of proteolysis while lipolysis was significantly lower (p<0.001) in the modified product with about 20% fewer free fatty acids. The amounts of short and medium chain free fatty acids (C-4-C-14), responsible for the marked pungent flavor of goat dairy products, differed significantly lower (p0.001) in the two products: 203.41 mg/100 g cheese for the traditional product and 166.22 mg/100 g for the modified product. Finally, cheese yields with the modified procedure were 12% greater than the yield obtained with the traditional process.